Steve: the savings/hassle ratio is a very interesting point. I think for me there are two factors in play. First, the saving has to be a reasonable amount on an annualised basis. $10, $20, maybe even $50 I'm not that interested in. But a couple of hundred is definitely worth getting out of bed for. Consider if you save $2 in 6 minutes, bearing in mind that's post-tax dollars, that's like making at least $30 per hour. Second, there is the satisfaction. I think when you have a desk job with little concrete output, there is a certain extra satisfaction in making tangible things yourself

Weka: feed works in Google Reader, Bloglines etc. Wanna drop me an email with a screenshot and some browser version details? This is a hand-rolled blog so it's certainly possible that I have screwed up the feed (which is Atom, not RSS btw).

Heather: yeah, there's a weird vibe to a lot of the American frugal bloggers, and much of what they suggest wouldn't work here. And the food suggestions all seem to boil down to freezing a years' worth of food and and recipes where everything comes out of packets and tins. I may be mean, but I'm a food snob too.

I guess a note on why I was thinking about the frugal bourgeois is worthwhile: so much of saving money requires a little working capital to start with.

In the last few years I have become more and more keen on saving money. What for? To bring forward the day when I can either work less, freeing up time for other stuff; or to allow me to choose less remunerative but more fulfilling employment. It doesn't really matter how I strategise: whether I want to save up a lump of capital, or reduce my expenses to a level where I need less income, I still need to save.

Recently I got Your Money Or Your Life out of the library. One of the exercises in the book is to add up what you think your lifetime earnings have been, and compare this with your current net worth. I am not going to confess either of those sums here, but I will say that it troubles me how little I have managed to retain out of 15 odd years in the workforce.

So yeah, saving. What have I done recently to save money?

I bought a bread machine about a month ago for $99. A loaf of bread from the bread machine costs less than $2 in ingredients and power, assuming you buy flour in at least 5kg bags. Bread is currently around $4 per loaf, and we eat 3 or 4 loaves a week, so that machine will have paid for itself in four months, more or less, and will save $300 odd per year thereafter. The bread machine was on special and I had carefully watched the going rate for some time, so I knew it was a deal. I bake by hand every weekend but I can't fit it in during the week, and the resulting bread is as good as sliced supermarket bread—and I know exactly what went into it.

Following Che's advice, I have started buying fruit and vegetables at the Sunday market at Waitangi Park. (Che ought to have a Waitangi Park Market tag, he blogs about it enough.) We usually do the groceries at Pak'N'Save, and my guess is that the produce from the market is at least 30% cheaper, which makes it thoroughly worthwhile, given our consumption.

I have also discovered three sources of meat that are cheaper and better quality than Pak'N'Save (which is pretty much my benchmark for cheap): the halal butcher in Newtown (cheap, and very well trimmed); Prestons (have some good whole cuts like brisket point for enormous freezable stews); and the aforesaid Waitangi Park market (there's a guy comes down with delicious lamb every week, and you can order online for cheap). Supermarket meat is always the most expensive, and in my experience they manage to pack it so that enormous lumps of bone and fat are concealed on the underside and invisible till you get it home.

Anyway, since I worked out how much I was saving by roasting my own coffee, it occurred to me to wonder what baking your own bread does.

I bake once or twice a week. Always on the weekend, and sometimes later in the week, depending on just how frantic things get. We go through about three loaves a week.

It takes less than a dollar's worth of flour and 20 cents worth of electricity to make a loaf. Sourdough starter is free, and I'm not costing the spoons of salt or oil. The labour is negligible when using the no-knead method. So I reckon that's $2-4 dollars a week we save, which may not sound like much, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at $150 at the end of the year, would you?

I don't know where I'm going to draw the line at do-it-yourself production. I'm a bit too disorganised for beer or wine making, and rented accomodation precludes keeping livestock on the premises. But cheese doesn't seem too hard...

There is no tea or coffee in our current workplace, because it's a teeny-tiny startup. So I was quite pleased with myself for grinding and bringing in my own coffee to have in a plunger every day. Very economical. Far cheaper than buying a couple of takeaway cups every day.

But Steve At Work scoffed, saying that the really economical thing to do was to roast your own, like him. "Good idea", I thought, and then quietly ignored him. Then Julian got a popcorn machine and some green beans from Maria for Christmas. He told me all about it, and this has pushed me over the edge.

I just made my first batch this morning, with green beans from People's Coffee in Newtown, and a popcorn maker. It's very easy. There are instructions all over the web, so I won't bother repeating them here. The results are promising, and I'm sure I'll get better at it once I've calibrated the process. I was cackling with glee at the end as I admired my beautiful dark Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans.

So how much cheaper is it?

Let's see. Normally I go through 200g to 250g of beans a week, at about $40 a kilo, so at minimum that's a shocking $400+ per year. Wow.

Green beans cost $10 per kilo. The kitchen scales tell me you lose about 20% of the weight in roasting. Five minutes of electricity in a 1250W popper costs about 2c. All up, a year's supply is $125. The popper was $45, so assuming it lasts out the year (they wear out fast when abused in this way) I am $230 ahead. Brilliant.